Two months after a summer of rage began on Hong Kong's streets, pro-democracy protesters and the southern Chinese city's leaders are digging in for a long war of attrition.

What began as a mass display of focused opposition to a planned extradition bill has, over nine consecutive weekends of increasingly violent clashes with police, evolved into something deeper, wider and far angrier.

The streets of the global financial hub have become frequent battlegrounds, filled with acrid clouds of tear gas and littered with rubber bullet casings.

The protesters have adopted tactics and wider pro-democracy demands that present an unprecedented challenge to the city's ultimate rulers in Beijing.

Chinese authorities have responded with ever-stronger warnings, yet each time the protesters have simply doubled-down.

They have stormed the Hong Kong legislature, laid siege to police stations, disrupted the transport network and staged multiple, simultaneous demonstrations that have stretched the capacity of the local police to its limits.

"We have to keep hitting the streets, we have to keep fighting, we have no choice," one protester, who gave her surname as Lo, told AFP as crowds pelted a police station with rocks on Monday night during the most widespread day of unrest since the crisis began.

"None of our demands have been met, the government is refusing to listen to the people."

- Revolutionary chants -

When brief clashes between police and protesters first erupted on June 9 after a huge, peaceful protest march, few could have predicted that a city renowned for safety and stability could unravel so quickly.

Back then the protests were sparked by a hugely unpopular -- and now postponed -- plan to allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland.

The most commonly heard chant was "chit wui" (withdraw), a reference to the loathed bill.

Now the most popular chant is a rallying cry first used by a now jailed independence activist: "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time!".

It is shouted outside courtrooms as protesters appear in the dock, during rallies and clashes with police. And it is sprayed onto walls across the city.

Another popular graffiti tag is: "You taught us peaceful marches were useless".

City leader Carrie Lam -- who was appointed by a pro-Beijing committee -- has shown little appetite for compromise.

Beyond agreeing to postpone the extradition bill, she has resisted calls for her resignation, an amnesty for those arrested or an independent inquiry.

On Monday, in her most forceful comments yet, Lam condemned the protesters and said their new revolutionary chant showed they were "trying to destroy Hong Kong".

- No end game -

With the violence escalating, Beijing has thrown its full-throated support behind Lam and the city's police.

In its harshest warning yet to the protesters, Beijing warned on Tuesday that "those who play with fire will perish by it", and not to mistake its restraint so far for weakness.

Analysts say further clashes are inevitable in the coming weeks and months.

"The confrontation between protesters and police will escalate," said Hong Kong-based political analyst Willy Lam, adding it was "difficult to anticipate the end game".

He said protests would likely end if Beijing either allowed Lam to make some concessions -- such as an inquiry and her resignation -- or sent in reinforcements, either mainland police officers or the military.

But Chinese President Xi Jinping is hesitant to do either at the moment, both of which carry significant reputational risks.

Either Xi is seen as weak for giving in to the protesters, or too violent for deploying mainland security forces.

Those options are particularly unpalatable now as Xi does not want to take the shine off celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the People Republic of China in early October, according to Lam.

- Waiting game -

Many believe Beijing is playing a waiting game, hoping the increasingly violent actions taken by more hardcore protesters will damage the movement.

A similar wait-and-see tactic -- accompanied by the pressure and intimidation of arresting leaders -- worked during the two-month 2014 pro-democracy protests known as the "Umbrella Movement".

"As the movement lingered, a large portion of the population was against them as people's everyday life was disrupted without any prospect of concessions from Beijing," said Lam.

But 2019's protests feel more existential to many Hong Kong protesters, who say freedoms have slid even further since Beijing successfully faced down the Umbrella Movement.

As the protester Lo made her way back home on Monday night, she was adamant the movement would not lose steam.

"Days, weeks, months, if needs," she said when asked how long she was willing to continue. "What choice to we have?".

Hong Kong protesters and opponents battle in old communist stronghold
Hong Kong (AFP) Aug 6, 2019 - Armed with wooden poles and ransacked road signs, pro-democracy protesters and their opponents fought an extraordinary battle on a Hong Kong street, exposing deep ideological fault lines coursing through the city.

Dozens of unidentified men charged onto a road where protesters had been walking and attacked them with long wooden poles on Monday night.

The shocking scenes -- captured on film -- showed the demonstrators fighting back against the men, pelting them with traffic cones and even turning their aggressors' weapons against them.

Cars, including taxis and a Mercedes-Benz, were also caught up in the melees as both sides fought over street fencing dividing the thoroughfare.

The men were eventually chased away, with protesters smashing the windows of a nearby building where they believed some of the attackers had taken refuge as a man inside brandished a meat cleaver.

The clashes illustrate the polarisation of Hong Kong after two months of pro-democracy protests and clashes that pose the biggest threat to Beijing's authority since Hong Kong's handover from the British in 1997.

North Point, a district on the main island where the clashes took place, was historically a communist stronghold during British rule.

It is known for its large community of Fujianese people who migrated from the mainland province in the 1960s and have long maintained strong family and clan links there.

- Troubled past -

During the 1967 leftist riots -- in which more than 50 people died -- North Point was often the epicentre of the violence.

Police famously landed by helicopter on the roof of an apartment building and discovered a leftist headquarters.

The riots were sparked by widespread social discontent towards the colonial government over widespread corruption and poverty. But they were also fuelled by the influence of the Cultural Revolution which was raging on the mainland at the time.

Popular opinion soon turned against the leftists who left hundreds of bombs across the city and murdered a well-known anti-communist radio commentator. Two young children were killed by a bomb left in North Point.

Monday's clashes in North Point took place during the most sustained and widespread day of battles with Hong Kong police, who fired 800 tear gas canisters in at least a dozen locations and made 148 arrests.

After sunset, messaging forums used by anti-government protesters began circulating pictures of unidentified men holding sticks standing on North Point's streets.

The scenes were reminiscent of shocking violence two weeks ago when suspected triad members in white T-shirts, armed with poles and batons, set upon anti-government protesters and bystanders at a train station in the town of Yuen Long close to the Chinese border.

The men in North Point weren't dressed alike, and unlike the Yuen Long assailants -- who ambushed their targets and hospitalised 45 people -- they were soon bested.

The city also witnessed a rare general strike that day with activists disrupting vital rush-hour commuter train services and blocking major roads.

That sparked other flashpoint clashes from people either opposed to the protests or that day's disruption.

One video, verified by AFP, showed a car smashing its way through a protester roadblock in the northern town of Yuen Long.

Another showed a taxi ramming protesters who hurled projectiles as it sped by.

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